DOCSLIB.ORG

From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage Lisa Hopkins EARLY DRAMA, ART, AND MUSIC From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage EARLY DRAMA, ART, AND MUSIC Series Editors David Bevington University of Chicago Robert Clark Kansas State University Jesse Hurlbut Brigham Young University Alexandra Johnston University of Toronto Veronique B. Plesch Colby College ME Medieval Institute Publications is a program of The Medieval Institute, College of Arts and Sciences From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage by Lisa Hopkins Early Drama, Art, and Music MedievaL InsTITUTE PUBLICATIOns Western Michigan University Kalamazoo Copyright © 2017 by the Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 9781580442794 eISBN: 9781580442800 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or trans- mitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher. Introduction N his BOOK ON Ancient Britons and the Antiquarian Imagination, IStuart Piggott notes that John Earle’s 1628 Micro-cosmographie repre- sented an antiquary as one who “likes Death the better, because it gath- ers him to his Fathers.”1 The antiquarians of whom Piggott writes were fascinated by the past and felt personally connected to it, and so too did many others in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries whose interest was more general than scholarly. In this book I discuss a number of early mod- ern English plays set more or less in the period of English (or occasionally Scottish, Irish or Welsh) history between the Romans and the Normans. The years between the withdrawal of the legions toward the end of the fourth century and the arrival of the Normans in 1066 saw both the leg- endary Arthur and the more securely historical but almost equally famous Alfred, as well as Alfred’s grandson Athelstan, not so well remembered now but a significant figure in early modern England. The fifth century onward also saw successive waves of invasions by Angles, Jutes, and Danes; at the end of this period, Britain had been transformed beyond recogni- tion, and yet a number of early modern plays which are set during this period also suggest that there was nevertheless an underlying continuity. There was a surprising number of such plays, though not all of them are now extant, which collectively constitute what Gordon McMullan has called “a larger theatrical project to interpret Elizabethan and Jacobean Britain through the reconstruction of a range of different pasts.”2 In addition to those I discuss in the course of the book, we know of lost plays on Vortigern, Mulmutius Dunwallow, Arthur, Estrild, Ferrex and Porrex, Guthlac, Hardicanute, and Earl Godwin and of one by Beaumont on Madon King of Britain (Madon being the son of Gwendoline and Locrine). Misha Teramura notes that “we find in Philip Henslowe’sDiary that the Admiral’s Men were preparing for a production of a play called ‘The Conquest of Brute’ (and perhaps its sequel) through the second half of 1598”;3 its subtitle of “with the first founding of the Bath” suggests that 2 INTRODUCTION it may also have featured King Bladud.4 Paul Whitfield White observes that “Among the many lost plays identified by title in Henslowe’sDiary are at least five that relate to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,”5 and Tom Rutter has also suggested that the lost Warlamchester may have been about either the martyrdom of St. Alban or the revolt of Boudica.6 There was a particular propensity for performing Latin plays about English history at English Catholic colleges abroad, including Mercia, sive Pietas Coronata at Saint-Omer and Aluredus sive Alvredus, Fatum Vortigerni and Emma Angliae regina ac Mater Hardicanuti Regis at Douai (these can be translated as Mercia, or Piety Crowned, Alured or Alvred, Vortigern’s Doom, and Emma Queen of England and Mother of King Hardicanute). In this book, I will consider a range of texts by a variety of authors which collectively present a picture of the period from the Roman to the Norman invasions, including Drayton’s Poly-Olbion, Jasper Fisher’s Fuimus Troes, Thomas Hughes’ The Misfortunes of Arthur, R. A.’s The Valiant Welshman, Dekker’s Old Fortunatus, Dekker, Ford and Rowley’s The Welsh Embassador, Fletcher’s Bonduca, Richard Harvey’s Philadelphus, or a Defence of Brutes, Samuel Daniel’s History of England, John Clapham’s History of Great Britain, Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, Macbeth, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, and Lear, Middleton’s Hengist, King of Kent, Richard Brome’s The Queen’s Exchange, Anthony Brewer’s The Lovesick King, William Rowley’s A Shoemaker a Gentleman, Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton’s Gorboduc, William Haughton’s Grim the Collier of Croydon, Lodowick Carlell’s Arviragus and Philicia, Shirley’s St Patrick for Ireland, Henry Burnell’s Landgartha, and the anonymous Locrine, A Knack to Know a Knave, Fair Em, Guy of Warwick, The Birth of Merlin, No-body and Some-body and Edmund Ironside. Also, although I generally exclude from consideration plays written in Latin, such as Joseph Simons’ 1624 Mercia for Saint-Omer,7 I make an exception for William Drury’s 1619 Aluredus, sive Alvredus, since its 1659 translation by Robert Knightley as Alfrede, or Right Reinthron’d is in itself part of the ongoing discourse of English and British national identities, and I look also at a number of plays which though not set in the period before the Conquest did nevertheless con- tribute to the ways in which the ancestors of the English and British were conceptualized, including the The Palsgrave, or the Hector of Germany, Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany, The Seven Champions of Christendom, Henry VIII, Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, Dido, Queen of Carthage, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Chettle’s Hoffman, and Dekker and Massinger’s The Virgin Martyr. INTRODUCTIOn 3 The story that plays set before the Conquest collectively tell begins with the Trojan prince Aeneas, supposedly the son of the goddess Venus. According to Virgil, Aeneas escaped from the sack of Troy carrying his elderly father on his shoulders and leading his young son Ascanius by the hand, though his wife Creusa became separated from the party and was never seen again. Aeneas had a divinely ordained destiny to make his way to Italy and there found a second Troy, but bad weather swept him onto the coast of Carthage, where Queen Dido fell in love with him and tried to persuade him to stay with her. When he eventually abandoned her, she committed suicide. Resuming his journey, Aeneas arrived safely in Italy, where he founded Rome and was eventually succeeded in its rule first by his son Ascanius and then by his grandson Silvius. Silvius’s son Brutus, however, accidentally killed his father during a hunting trip and went into exile, searching for a land where he and his followers could settle. Eventually he found a country with no existing inhabitants, established himself and his followers there, and named it after himself: Britain. In the version of events told by the influential twelfth-century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth in hisHistory of the Kings of Britain, this is where British History starts. Brutus divided the island among his three sons, Locrine, from whom England gets its alternative name of Logres, by which it is sometimes known in Arthurian myths (this is the origin of the Welsh name for England, Lloegyr), Albanact (who gave his name to Alba, later known as Scotland), and Camber, from whom Wales derives its name in its own language, Cymru. Locrine’s only daughter Sabren or Sabrina, pursued by her jealous stepmother Gwendoline, drowned herself in the River Severn (which supposedly takes its name from her) and thus became an emblem of the divisions between the constituent parts of the island. This story is told inLocrine , published in 1595 as “newly set foorth, overseene and corrected, by W. S.” and apparently a revision of an earlier play called Estrild written by the Babington conspirator Charles Tilney, executed in 1586. Geoffrey then proceeds to tell a series of racy, circumstantial, and totally unfounded stories about a number of very colorful figures who, he claims, ruled or inhabited Britain during the period before the Romans arrived. Chief among them are Bladud, the father of King Lear, who sup- posedly built the Roman baths at Bath (where a seventeenth-century statue of him can still be seen), learned to fly, and died when he crash- landed on the temple of Apollo in London; Lear himself, subject of both Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606) and the older, anonymous King Leir; and 4 INTRODUCTION his daughter Cordella, sometimes evoked as a precedent for female rule. The next prominent figure is Gorboduc, eponymous hero of a 1560s play by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, whose sons Ferrex and Porrex (also remembered in the anonymous Ferrex and Porrex) killed each other and so brought the direct line of Locrine to an end. After a period of civil war, rule then passes to Molmutius Dunwallo (sometimes called Dunwallo Molmutius), son of the king of Cornwall, about whom the Admiral’s Men acquired a play (now lost) in 1598.8 It was during the disputes between Molmutius Dunwallo’s sons, Brennus and Belinus, that Elidure, the cen- tral figure of the anonymous playNo-body and Some-body (1606), suppos- edly reigned three separate times; in some versions of her story Molmutius Dunwallo was also the father of St.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • THE KINGS and QUEENS of BRITAIN, PART I (From Geoffrey of Monmouth’S Historia Regum Britanniae, Tr
    THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF BRITAIN, PART I (from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, tr. Lewis Thorpe) See also Bill Cooper’s extended version (incorporating details given by Nennius’s history and old Welsh texts, and adding hypothesised dates for each monarch, as explained here). See also the various parallel versions of the Arthurian section. Aeneas │ Ascanius │ Silvius = Lavinia’s niece │ Corineus (in Cornwall) Brutus = Ignoge, dtr of Pandrasus │ ┌─────────────┴─┬───────────────┐ Gwendolen = Locrinus Kamber (in Wales) Albanactus (in Scotland) │ └Habren, by Estrildis Maddan ┌──┴──┐ Mempricius Malin │ Ebraucus │ 30 dtrs and 20 sons incl. Brutus Greenshield └Leil └Rud Hud Hudibras └Bladud │ Leir ┌────────────────┴┬──────────────┐ Goneril Regan Cordelia = Maglaurus of Albany = Henwinus of Cornwall = Aganippus of the Franks │ │ Marganus Cunedagius │ Rivallo ┌──┴──┐ Gurgustius (anon) │ │ Sisillius Jago │ Kimarcus │ Gorboduc = Judon ┌──┴──┐ Ferrex Porrex Cloten of Cornwall┐ Dunvallo Molmutius = Tonuuenna ┌──┴──┐ Belinus Brennius = dtr of Elsingius of Norway Gurguit Barbtruc┘ = dtr of Segnius of the Allobroges └Guithelin = Marcia Sisillius┘ ┌┴────┐ Kinarius Danius = Tanguesteaia Morvidus┘ ┌──────┬────┴─┬──────┬──────┐ Gorbonianus Archgallo Elidurus Ingenius Peredurus │ ┌──┴──┐ │ │ │ (anon) Marganus Enniaunus │ Idvallo Runo Gerennus Catellus┘ Millus┘ Porrex┘ Cherin┘ ┌─────┴─┬───────┐ Fulgenius Edadus Andragius Eliud┘ Cledaucus┘ Clotenus┘ Gurgintius┘ Merianus┘ Bledudo┘ Cap┘ Oenus┘ Sisillius┘ ┌──┴──┐ Bledgabred Archmail └Redon └Redechius
    [Show full text]
  • The Influence of Seneca on 1934) Pp. 33-54; Philip Edwards, Thomas Kyd
    Notes CHAPTER ONE. COMMON ELEMENTS I. For Senecan influence, see John W. Cunliffe, The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy (London: Macmillan, 1893); F. L. Lucas, Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922); T. S. Eliot, 'Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca', in Elizabethan Essays (London: Faber, 1934) pp. 33-54; Philip Edwards, Thomas Kyd and Early Elizabethan Tragedy, Writers and their Work Series (London: Longmans, 1966) pp. 10-11. The importance of Senecan influence has been denied by Howard Baker in Induction to Tragedy: A Study in Development ofForm in •Gorboduc', 'The Spanish Tragedy' and 'Titus Andronicus' (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1939), and by George Hunter in 'Seneca and the Elizabethans: A Case Study in "Influence"', ShS, XX (1967) 17-26. 2. Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, ed. Geoffrey Shepherd (London: Nelson, 1965) p. 118. 3. John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (London, 1583). For a pictorial anthology of 'sundrye kindes ofTormentes' (including blinding), see pp. 794f. at the end ofvol. 1. A chained copy of this immensely popular work was made available in every cathedral, and regular public readings were prescribed by Church ordinance. 4. This meaning has not been recorded by the OED. For examples, see Chapman, Hero and Leander, Ill. 59-64,146; Middleton and Rowley, The Changeling, I.i.l91; Hamlet, v.ii.289-90. 5. Romeo and Juliet, II.vi.9-15; Othello, I.iii.341-2, u.i.219-20. 6. On the Greek attitude to change, see J. B. Bury, The Idea ofProgress (London: Macmillan, 1932) pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Download
    Early Theatre 9.2 Issues in Review Lucy Munro, Anne Lancashire, John Astington, and Marta Straznicky Popular Theatre and the Red Bull Governing the Pen to the Capacity of the Stage: Reading the Red Bull and Clerkenwell In his introduction to Early Theatre’s Issues in Review segment ‘Reading the Elizabethan Acting Companies’, published in 2001, Scott McMillin called for an approach to the study of early modern drama which takes theatre companies as ‘the organizing units of dramatic production’. Such an approach will, he suggests, entail reading plays ‘more fully than we have been trained to do, taking them not as authorial texts but as performed texts, seeing them as collaborative endeavours which involve the writers and dozens of other theatre people, and placing the staged plays in a social network to which both the players and audiences – perhaps even the playwrights – belonged’.1 We present here a variation on this approach: three essays that focus on the Red Bull theatre and its Clerkenwell locality. Rather than focusing on individual companies, we take the playhouse and location as our organising principle. Nonetheless, we are dealing with precisely the kind of decentring activity that McMillin had in mind, examining early drama through collaborative performance, through performance styles and audience taste, and through the presentation of a theatrical repertory in print. Each essay deals with a different ‘social network’: Anne Lancashire re-examines the evidence for the London Clerkenwell play, a multi-day biblical play performed by clerks in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries; John Astington takes a look at acting traditions and repertory composition at the Red Bull and its fellow in the northern suburbs, Golden Lane’s Fortune playhouse; and Marta Straznicky looks at questions relating to the audience for Red Bull plays in the playhouse and the print-shop.
    [Show full text]
  • 6. the Tudors and Jacobethan England
    6. The Tudors and Jacobethan England History Literature Click here for a Tudor timeline. The royal website includes a history of the Tudor Monarchs [and those prior and post this period]. Art This site will guide you to short articles on the Kings and Queens of the Tudor Music Dynasty. Another general guide to Tudor times can be found here. Architecture Click here for a fuller account of Elizabeth. One of the principle events of the reign of Elizabeth was the defeat of the Spanish Armada (here's the BBC Armada site). Elizabeth's famous (and short) speech before the battle can be found here. England's power grew mightily in this period, which is reflected in the lives and achievements of contemporary 'heroes' such as Sir Francis Drake, fearless fighter against the Spanish who circumnavigated the globe, and Sir Walter Raleigh (nowadays pronounced Rawley), one of those who established the first British colonies across the Atlantic (and who spelt his name in over 40 different ways...). Raleigh is generally 'credited' with the commercial introduction of tobacco into England .about 1778, and possibly of the potato. On a lighter note, information on Elizabethan costume is available here (including such items as farthingales and bumrolls). Literature Drama and the theatre The Elizabethan age is the golden age of English drama, for which the establishment of permanent theatres is not least responsible. As performances left the inn-yards and noble houses for permanent sites in London, the demand for drama increased enormously. While some of the smaller theatres were indoors, it is the purpose-built round/square/polygonal buildings such as The Theatre (the first, built in 1576), the Curtain (late 1570s?), the Rose (1587), the Swan (1595), the Fortune (1600) and of course the Globe (1599) that are most characteristic of the period.
    [Show full text]
  • Cordelia''s Portrait in the Context of King Lear''s
    Paula M. Rodríguez Gómez Cordelias Portrait in the Context of King Lears... 181 CORDELIAS PORTRAIT IN THE CONTEXT OF KING LEARS INDIVIDUATION* Paula M. Rodríguez Gómez** Abstract: This analysis attempts to show the relations between the individual psyche and the contents of the collective unconscious. Following Von Franzs analytical technique, the tragic action in King Lear will be read as an individuation process that will rescue archetypal contents and solve existential paradoxes that cause an imbalance between the ego and the self, leading to self-destruction. Once communication is eased and balance is restored, the transformation-seeking process that engaged the design of the play itself becomes resolved, and events can be led to a conventional tragic resolution. Jungian analysis will therefore provide a critical framework to unveil the subconscious contents that tear the character of the king between annihilation and survival, the anima complex that affects the king, responding thus for the action of the play and its centuries-old success. Keywords: collective unconscious, myth, individuation, archetype, tragedy, anima. Resumen: Este análisis pretende sacar a la luz las relaciones entre la psyche individual y los contenidos del inconsciente colectivo. Siguiendo la técnica analítica de Von Franz, la acción trágica de King Lear será entendida a través del proceso de individuación que revierte sobre los contenidos arquetípicos y resuelve las paradojas existenciales que cau- san el desequilibrio entre ego y self. Una vez que la comunicación es facilitada y el equilibrio psíquico recuperado, el proceso transformativo que afecta la génesis de la trama se resuelve y el argumento alcanza una resolución convencional.
    [Show full text]
  • English Renaissance
    1 ENGLISH RENAISSANCE Unit Structure: 1.0 Objectives 1.1 The Historical Overview 1.2 The Elizabethan and Jacobean Ages 1.2.1 Political Peace and Stability 1.2.2 Social Development 1.2.3 Religious Tolerance 1.2.4 Sense and Feeling of Patriotism 1.2.5 Discovery, Exploration and Expansion 1.2.6 Influence of Foreign Fashions 1.2.7 Contradictions and Set of Oppositions 1.3 The Literary Tendencies of the Age 1.3.1 Foreign Influences 1.3.2 Influence of Reformation 1.3.3 Ardent Spirit of Adventure 1.3.4 Abundance of Output 1.4 Elizabethan Poetry 1.4.1 Love Poetry 1.4.2 Patriotic Poetry 1.4.3 Philosophical Poetry 1.4.4 Satirical Poetry 1.4.5 Poets of the Age 1.4.6 Songs and Lyrics in Elizabethan Poetry 1.4.7 Elizabethan Sonnets and Sonneteers 1.5 Elizabethan Prose 1.5.1 Prose in Early Renaissance 1.5.2 The Essay 1.5.3 Character Writers 1.5.4 Religious Prose 1.5.5 Prose Romances 2 1.6 Elizabethan Drama 1.6.1 The University Wits 1.6.2 Dramatic Activity of Shakespeare 1.6.3 Other Playwrights 1.7. Let‘s Sum up 1.8 Important Questions 1.0. OBJECTIVES This unit will make the students aware with: The historical and socio-political knowledge of Elizabethan and Jacobean Ages. Features of the ages. Literary tendencies, literary contributions to the different of genres like poetry, prose and drama. The important writers are introduced with their major works. With this knowledge the students will be able to locate the particular works in the tradition of literature, and again they will study the prescribed texts in the historical background.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Thesis
    This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Telltale women the dramaturgy of female characters in Shakespeare's history plays Bachrach, Hailey Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 02. Oct. 2021 Bachrach 1 TELLTALE WOMEN The Dramaturgy of Female Characters in Shakespeare’s History Plays By Hailey Bachrach Submitted to King’s College London English Department in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 30 September 2020 Bachrach 2 Abstract .....................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Michael West
    Theater of Enigma in Shakespeare’s England Michael West Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2017 Michael West All rights reserved ABSTRACT Theater of Enigma in Shakespeare’s England Michael West Theater of Enigma in Shakespeare’s England demonstrates the cognitive, affective, and social import of enigmatic theatrical moments. While the presence of other playgoers obviously shapes the experience of attending a play, I argue that deliberately induced moments of audience ignorance are occasions for audience members to be especially aware of their relations to others who may or may not share their bafflement. I explore the character of states of knowing and not-knowing among audience members and the relations that obtain among playgoers who inhabit these states. Further, I trace the range of performance techniques whereby playgoers are positioned in a cognitive no-man's land, lying somewhere between full understanding and utter ignorance—techniques that I collectively term “enigmatic theater.” I argue that moments of enigmatic theater were a dynamic agent in the formation of collectives in early modern playhouses. I use here the term “collective” to denote the temporary, occasional, and fleeting quality of these groupings, which occur during performance but are dissipated afterwards. Sometimes, this collective resembles what Victor Turner terms communitas, in which the normal societal divisions are suspended and the playgoers become a unified collectivity. At other times, however, plays solicit the formation of multiple collectives defined by their differing degrees of knowledge about a seeming enigma.
    [Show full text]
  • Shakespeare As Literary Dramatist
    SHAKESPEARE AS LITERARY DRAMATIST LUKAS ERNE published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge cb2 1rp, United Kingdom cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, cb2 2ru,UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon´ 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org C Lukas Erne 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2003 Printed in the United Kingdomat the University Press, Cambridge Typeface Adobe Garamond 11/12.5 pt System LATEX 2ε [tb] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn 0 521 82255 6 hardback Contents List of illustrations page ix Acknowledgments x Introduction 1 part i publication 1 The legitimation of printed playbooks in Shakespeare’s time 31 2 The making of “Shakespeare” 56 3 Shakespeare and the publication of his plays (I): the late sixteenth century 78 4 Shakespeare and the publication of his plays (II): the early seventeenth century 101 5 The players’ alleged opposition to print 115 part ii texts 6 Why size matters: “the two hours’ traffic of our stage” and the length of Shakespeare’s plays 131 7 Editorial policy and the length of Shakespeare’s plays 174 8 “Bad” quartos and their origins: Romeo and Juliet, Henry V , and Hamlet 192 9 Theatricality, literariness and the texts of Romeo and Juliet, Henry V , and Hamlet 220 vii viii Contents Appendix A: The plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in print, 1584–1623 245 Appendix B: Heminge and Condell’s “Stolne, and surreptitious copies” and the Pavier quartos 255 Appendix C: Shakespeare and the circulation of dramatic manuscripts 259 Select bibliography 262 Index 278 Illustrations 1 Title page: The Passionate Pilgrim, 1612, STC 22343.
    [Show full text]
  • Sources of Lear
    Meddling with Masterpieces: the On-going Adaptation of King Lear by Lynne Bradley B.A., Queen’s University 1997 M.A., Queen’s University 1998 A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of English © Lynne Bradley, 2008 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photo-copying or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Meddling with Masterpieces: the On-going Adaptation of King Lear by Lynne Bradley B.A., Queen’s University 1997 M.A., Queen’s University 1998 Supervisory Committee Dr. Sheila M. Rabillard, Supervisor (Department of English) Dr. Janelle Jenstad, Departmental Member (Department of English) Dr. Michael Best, Departmental Member (Department of English) Dr. Annalee Lepp, Outside Member (Department of Women’s Studies) iii Supervisory Committee Dr. Sheila M. Rabillard, Supervisor (Department of English) Dr. Janelle Jenstad, Departmental Member (Department of English) Dr. Michael Best, Departmental Member (Department of English) Dr. Annalee Lepp, Outside Member (Department of Women’s Studies) Abstract The temptation to meddle with Shakespeare has proven irresistible to playwrights since the Restoration and has inspired some of the most reviled and most respected works of theatre. Nahum Tate’s tragic-comic King Lear (1681) was described as an execrable piece of dementation, but played on London stages for one hundred and fifty years. David Garrick was equally tempted to adapt King Lear in the eighteenth century, as were the burlesque playwrights of the nineteenth. In the twentieth century, the meddling continued with works like King Lear’s Wife (1913) by Gordon Bottomley and Dead Letters (1910) by Maurice Baring.
    [Show full text]
  • A Welsh Classical Dictionary
    A WELSH CLASSICAL DICTIONARY DACHUN, saint of Bodmin. See s.n. Credan. He has been wrongly identified with an Irish saint Dagan in LBS II.281, 285. G.H.Doble seems to have been misled in the same way (The Saints of Cornwall, IV. 156). DAGAN or DANOG, abbot of Llancarfan. He appears as Danoc in one of the ‘Llancarfan Charters’ appended to the Life of St.Cadog (§62 in VSB p.130). Here he is a clerical witness with Sulien (presumably abbot) and king Morgan [ab Athrwys]. He appears as abbot of Llancarfan in five charters in the Book of Llandaf, where he is called Danoc abbas Carbani Uallis (BLD 179c), and Dagan(us) abbas Carbani Uallis (BLD 158, 175, 186b, 195). In these five charters he is contemporary with bishop Berthwyn and Ithel ap Morgan, king of Glywysing. He succeeded Sulien as abbot and was succeeded by Paul. See Trans.Cym., 1948 pp.291-2, (but ignore the dates), and compare Wendy Davies, LlCh p.55 where Danog and Dagan are distinguished. Wendy Davies dates the BLD charters c.A.D.722 to 740 (ibid., pp.102 - 114). DALLDAF ail CUNIN COF. (Legendary). He is included in the tale of ‘Culhwch and Olwen’ as one of the warriors of Arthur's Court: Dalldaf eil Kimin Cof (WM 460, RM 106). In a triad (TYP no.73) he is called Dalldaf eil Cunyn Cof, one of the ‘Three Peers’ of Arthur's Court. In another triad (TYP no.41) we are told that Fferlas (Grey Fetlock), the horse of Dalldaf eil Cunin Cof, was one of the ‘Three Lovers' Horses’ (or perhaps ‘Beloved Horses’).
    [Show full text]
  • The Enactment of Religious Conversion in Medieval and Early Modern European Saint Plays
    Transformed Within, Transformed Without: The Enactment of Religious Conversion in Medieval and Early Modern European Saint Plays Emily Ciavarella Kuntz Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2020 © 2020 Emily Ciavarella Kuntz All Rights Reserved Abstract Transformed Within, Transformed Without: The Enactment of Religious Conversion in Medieval and Early Modern European Saint Plays Emily Ciavarella Kuntz My dissertation investigates the ways in which both medieval and early modern saint plays depict and incite religious conversion through self-aware theatrical techniques. In each of my chapters, I examine one or two popular saint plays from a given period and area (medieval England, medieval France, early modern Spain, and early modern England) and show how each play invites the audience to undergo a spiritual shift parallel to that of the saint protagonist. These playmakers harnessed the affective power and technology of theatrical performance to invite the audience to engage with performed religious conversion in a controlled, celebratory environment and to encourage them to convert toward a more deeply felt Christianity. The plays reconfigured the audience’s sensory and intellectual understanding of Christian theology in order for the audience to recognize spiritual truth within an inherently communal, participatory, and performative space. The plays I examine depend on the audience’s familiarity with theatrical culture and practice in order to distinguish between sincere and insincere religious performance. By making the process of conversion a theatrical performance onstage, these plays could advocate for the theatrical medium as a genuine and effective catalyst for spiritual renewal.
    [Show full text]